I switch songs on my iPhone, trying to get something suitably recessiony, something to remind me times are hard and things are bad and people are sad. I round the corner past the bus stops, happy not to accelerate past the slim redhead just ahead. Not checking her out, you understand, just happy for the people to see her coming towards them and not me. I’m all heart.
Past the slow moving mobile adverts they jokingly call buses in this metropolis, I see Grafton Street proper ahead of me, suffused in the dull light of an overcast day. I put one foot in front of the other, and consider the questions I was posed yesterday flipping through archive propaganda on my extensive boring-to-everybody-except-me media collection.
Why do we fight, I ask myself, as I take in the redhead again, dodging the people clogging the streets in their blind panic to get home to their Tesco Value ready meals and medicinal Cabernet Sauvignon.
In this war on terror, which we are still in, avers President Obama, why do we fight, and what freedoms are we protecting? I perform a quick audit as I amble up the street, the rehead catches the eye of someone she knows or would like to meet and peels off to the left.
In Dublin, which tends to benefit from wars whether or not it finds itself involved, we’re probably fighting for the right for people to march meaninglessly into the city centre and protest the economic misdeeds of the Taoiseach and his cabinet which will probably find its way back into government within five years of whenever the people here hoist them out. We’re fighting for the important right of a basically racist people to go on foreign holidays and keep itself independent from the rest of the world on which it depends for foreign direct investment.
We’re fighting for the freedom of free, freedom loving people to paint thremselves orange, drink badly mixed ten euro mojitos and pretend to be original in some meaningful but elusive way.
We’re certainly fighting for the freedom to have a religion, but for some reason, not freedom from that religion if we want it.
In honour of the morons who genuinely thought a flat was always going to be worth a quarter of a million, we’re fighting to push the house prices up and keep nice areas free from people who actually really just need a roof over their heads.
We’re fighting for the freedom to push the cost of living back up, in order to justify three euro milk, five euro coffees and three euro chocolate chip cookies.
We’re fighting for the freedom to believe that the green party we’re in now, pretending petrochemical companies are environmentally responsible at their heart, is a revolution.
We’re fighting for the right to believe that a revolution can happen and nobody gets hurt.
I spot the Butler’s chocolate shop ahead, take a left to avail of their double espresso macchiato and remember to write something hardassed on my blog.
